Is good food too much to ask for? Is it unreasonable for a hard working girl to expect some consistency in the quality of food she gets everyday? Is it a crime that I can't handle bacon, salami and pastrami on a daily basis? (It may be because I was raised as a vegetarian, but too much meat induces violent and scary nightmares with possible sexual subtext involving ghosts, mobsters, zombies, and ravening beasts.)
I have been having a week in hell. It all started on last Sunday at The Claims Company. It is quite a nice restaurant with a fun looking bar at the local mall. It boasted southwestern fare, so I decided to check it out. As a lot of you might know, southwestern is an indigenous, heart-unfriendly cuisine involving indecent amounts of cheese, cream, animal fat, white/red meat, and spices and flavors borrowed from Cajun and Mexican communities. I went in expecting chowder, gumbo, barbecued meat, deep fried everything, and grilled something.
Apparently the "mother lode" steak burger is their signature dish. Their menu consisted predominantly of steak in multiple forms of sandwiches. There were some token chicken dishes. One soup, that too French Onion--their innovation being covering the bowl of soup with a layer of cheese and baking it. Bah! The grilled salmon came with one medium sized fillet and a teaspoon of rice. That's it! The meal cost me $30.
The food situation went into a downward spiral during the week with the caterers at office turning up one uninspired offering after another. This is how it panned out:
Monday
Soup bar: Yawn!!! Low sodium Mediterranean vegetable soup is the best you could rustle up? Could you please go easy on the carrots? Thank you very much.
Stir fry bar: Come on!! zucchini and broccoli? The best you could do?
Tuesday
Worked from the hotel. Self cooking could never be good.
Wednesday
Soup bar: Seriously?? Split pea soup that looks like that little girl's vomit in Exorcist?
Stir Fry bar: Dude, zucchini and broccoli again? Oh you've tossed in tomatoes to mix things up?
Thursday
Soup bar: Yuck! Bean soup? Who eats bean soup? Haven't you heard of all the scatological jokes about beans?
Sandwich bar: Where the fuck is the chicken fucking quesedilla? You served it on last three Thursdays! Is it too much to expect some consistency around here?
Stir fry bar: Heavens! Are these boiled carrots? Really? And who puts celery in rice? Who puts celery in anything?
Friday
Soup bar: Son of a married couple! (I picked that one from 30 Rock.) Soup got over?
Stir fry bar: Oh, Yan Can Cook medley today? Do you know that Yan Can't Cook palatable food? Who makes sweet shrimp? Who makes tangy noodles with peanut sauce? (Wait, I had a baby barf on that one.)
By the end of the week, I was exhausted and defeated. I had also run out of groceries in the room. Saturday saw me up at 4:30 a.m., hungry. PJ saw me on video chat and was alarmed. "How could you do this to yourself?" she asked. "They.are.too.strong!" I said, getting together the last dregs of my energy. "I am done for!"
SD and his wife came and picked me up later that day. T, bless her, had made mutton biriyani. My vision cleared and my light headedness subsided after partaking of it. Thus fortified, we went to watch Ironman 2.
Ironman 2 is definitely bigger in scope. Locations, characters, CGI, sound, and problems are all more exotic and serious. Our hero is dying. He is having trouble communicating with his lady love and his best buddy. US government is after him. The much tattooed Micky Rourke is after him. There is a mysterious and mysteriously brunette Scarlett Johansson tottering around in figure hugging clothes and high heels. There is the issue of the one-eyed Samuel Jackson. Enough to keep adrenaline pumping.
However, the first half sags a little. There is a point, somewhere 45 minutes into the movie, where you can grab 40 winks and not miss anything. But it picks up admirably in the second half. All the new characters settle in. Sam Rockwell becomes great fun to watch. It moves strongly to the finale, setting up the sequel. Robert Downey Jr is zanier, funnier, and charminger than ever. His banter with Gwyneth Paltrow has a new edge. In short, full paisa vasool.
After the movie, we went to the lake. SD lives in this very pretty lakeside neighborhood called Evanston. It is a New England-ish place, with quaint ivy covered brick buildings leaning on to each other, beautiful old houses, white colonial buildings like the Ladies Club of Evanston, and a sweetly seamless modern downtown. I guess the presence of Northwestern University in the neighborhood is the reason for this look.
SD lives in this especially lovely apartment overlooking the lake. The Michigan lake is the most beautiful water body I have seen, taking on a myriad of shades between dark green to cerulean blue depending on the time of the year and time of the day. On Saturday, it was blue-green mostly, reflecting the cloud laden skies. It turned blue when the sun broke away from the clouds, going to mossy green in the shaded parts. (Pictures on Facebook.)
There wasn't much crowd except for an Alpha Chi fraternity (since 1880) mixer from the University. All the movies we've seen and all the books we've read on the subject made it easy for us to guess who was going to get lucky and who wasn't that day. Definitely that hot blond
playing Frisbee. No, not that nerdy Indian girl, looking lost.
It started raining on our way back to the car. We tried standing in the meager shade of pine trees, but we got quite wet anyway. On an already cold day, it froze us. So we went in search of hot beverages and got to an Ethiopian restaurant, which evidently was my hosts' favorite haunt.
It is the kind of restaurant I like -- cozy, full of texture, and with exotic looking (probably Ethiopian) women around. An Ethiopian pop music channel was blaring on the TV. I don't know why, I looked at the women and thought of female genital mutilation and subjected my hosts to blood curdling accounts. I think I was hungry again.
We had sambusas (samosas) and Ethiopian coffee. The TV continued with its music and a strange type of dancing. We figured out that it must be some sort of Ethiopian folk dance, but it looked like somebody having fits induced by Strychnine poisoning (if you don't get the reference, go read your Agatha Christie again). The music sounded a mix of Bedouin and Indian.
I begged T to pack me the leftover biriyani for dinner. She gracefully packed some for me and they dropped me back.
I have done not one, but two grocery runs today, but I am hungry and weak as ever. By the hammer of Thor, will this ever stop? (Did you get the 30 Rock reference? Didja? Didja?)
I have been having a week in hell. It all started on last Sunday at The Claims Company. It is quite a nice restaurant with a fun looking bar at the local mall. It boasted southwestern fare, so I decided to check it out. As a lot of you might know, southwestern is an indigenous, heart-unfriendly cuisine involving indecent amounts of cheese, cream, animal fat, white/red meat, and spices and flavors borrowed from Cajun and Mexican communities. I went in expecting chowder, gumbo, barbecued meat, deep fried everything, and grilled something.
Apparently the "mother lode" steak burger is their signature dish. Their menu consisted predominantly of steak in multiple forms of sandwiches. There were some token chicken dishes. One soup, that too French Onion--their innovation being covering the bowl of soup with a layer of cheese and baking it. Bah! The grilled salmon came with one medium sized fillet and a teaspoon of rice. That's it! The meal cost me $30.
The food situation went into a downward spiral during the week with the caterers at office turning up one uninspired offering after another. This is how it panned out:
Monday
Soup bar: Yawn!!! Low sodium Mediterranean vegetable soup is the best you could rustle up? Could you please go easy on the carrots? Thank you very much.
Stir fry bar: Come on!! zucchini and broccoli? The best you could do?
Tuesday
Worked from the hotel. Self cooking could never be good.
Wednesday
Soup bar: Seriously?? Split pea soup that looks like that little girl's vomit in Exorcist?
Stir Fry bar: Dude, zucchini and broccoli again? Oh you've tossed in tomatoes to mix things up?
Thursday
Soup bar: Yuck! Bean soup? Who eats bean soup? Haven't you heard of all the scatological jokes about beans?
Sandwich bar: Where the fuck is the chicken fucking quesedilla? You served it on last three Thursdays! Is it too much to expect some consistency around here?
Stir fry bar: Heavens! Are these boiled carrots? Really? And who puts celery in rice? Who puts celery in anything?
Friday
Soup bar: Son of a married couple! (I picked that one from 30 Rock.) Soup got over?
Stir fry bar: Oh, Yan Can Cook medley today? Do you know that Yan Can't Cook palatable food? Who makes sweet shrimp? Who makes tangy noodles with peanut sauce? (Wait, I had a baby barf on that one.)
By the end of the week, I was exhausted and defeated. I had also run out of groceries in the room. Saturday saw me up at 4:30 a.m., hungry. PJ saw me on video chat and was alarmed. "How could you do this to yourself?" she asked. "They.are.too.strong!" I said, getting together the last dregs of my energy. "I am done for!"
SD and his wife came and picked me up later that day. T, bless her, had made mutton biriyani. My vision cleared and my light headedness subsided after partaking of it. Thus fortified, we went to watch Ironman 2.
Ironman 2 is definitely bigger in scope. Locations, characters, CGI, sound, and problems are all more exotic and serious. Our hero is dying. He is having trouble communicating with his lady love and his best buddy. US government is after him. The much tattooed Micky Rourke is after him. There is a mysterious and mysteriously brunette Scarlett Johansson tottering around in figure hugging clothes and high heels. There is the issue of the one-eyed Samuel Jackson. Enough to keep adrenaline pumping.
However, the first half sags a little. There is a point, somewhere 45 minutes into the movie, where you can grab 40 winks and not miss anything. But it picks up admirably in the second half. All the new characters settle in. Sam Rockwell becomes great fun to watch. It moves strongly to the finale, setting up the sequel. Robert Downey Jr is zanier, funnier, and charminger than ever. His banter with Gwyneth Paltrow has a new edge. In short, full paisa vasool.
After the movie, we went to the lake. SD lives in this very pretty lakeside neighborhood called Evanston. It is a New England-ish place, with quaint ivy covered brick buildings leaning on to each other, beautiful old houses, white colonial buildings like the Ladies Club of Evanston, and a sweetly seamless modern downtown. I guess the presence of Northwestern University in the neighborhood is the reason for this look.
SD lives in this especially lovely apartment overlooking the lake. The Michigan lake is the most beautiful water body I have seen, taking on a myriad of shades between dark green to cerulean blue depending on the time of the year and time of the day. On Saturday, it was blue-green mostly, reflecting the cloud laden skies. It turned blue when the sun broke away from the clouds, going to mossy green in the shaded parts. (Pictures on Facebook.)
There wasn't much crowd except for an Alpha Chi fraternity (since 1880) mixer from the University. All the movies we've seen and all the books we've read on the subject made it easy for us to guess who was going to get lucky and who wasn't that day. Definitely that hot blond
playing Frisbee. No, not that nerdy Indian girl, looking lost.
It started raining on our way back to the car. We tried standing in the meager shade of pine trees, but we got quite wet anyway. On an already cold day, it froze us. So we went in search of hot beverages and got to an Ethiopian restaurant, which evidently was my hosts' favorite haunt.
It is the kind of restaurant I like -- cozy, full of texture, and with exotic looking (probably Ethiopian) women around. An Ethiopian pop music channel was blaring on the TV. I don't know why, I looked at the women and thought of female genital mutilation and subjected my hosts to blood curdling accounts. I think I was hungry again.
We had sambusas (samosas) and Ethiopian coffee. The TV continued with its music and a strange type of dancing. We figured out that it must be some sort of Ethiopian folk dance, but it looked like somebody having fits induced by Strychnine poisoning (if you don't get the reference, go read your Agatha Christie again). The music sounded a mix of Bedouin and Indian.
I begged T to pack me the leftover biriyani for dinner. She gracefully packed some for me and they dropped me back.
I have done not one, but two grocery runs today, but I am hungry and weak as ever. By the hammer of Thor, will this ever stop? (Did you get the 30 Rock reference? Didja? Didja?)
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